What does everyone in the design business think of the new subscription pricing Adobe is offering? Under this new subscription pricing, designers could pay a monthly or annual fee for a copy of Creative Suite Design Premium, for example.

On the downside, I think this gives me less control over the software I’m paying my hard-earned dollars for. With this, I’m still paying several hundred dollars a year for software that I don’t really own. There would be no more disc sitting in a drawer somewhere that I can take out and reinstall on a computer whenever I please, a couple years after I paid for it. Once I stop paying, I can’t use it anymore, even though I invested several hundred dollars. That’s a tough thing to let go of.

On the upside, this is great for those folks who upgrade every version. But I usually skip every other version. I mean come on, CS5.5 seems obnoxiously soon to me. Subscription pricing would have made that much easier and much less frustrating to have to fork over money again so soon. I think the best case for this new subscription pricing is design shops who hire contractors and just want to pay for software for a few months.

Overall, I think it’s probably a good direction for software pricing to be headed, but I’m still all about owning my software & media – so it’s probably not something i’ll be adopting in my future software purchasing just yet. Well, hopefully I’ll still have a choice in a couple years because I’m sure Adobe likes having this control.

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